I’m Grateful for Who I Am Now.

I’ve mentioned being in a really good place in my life a few times on the blog lately. I’m not trying to be obnoxious, brag, or make people that may be struggling feel bad. I promise you, it’s the exact opposite. Not long ago, I was a shell of myself, depressed and scared. I want you to know that no matter how long you feel like you’re suffering, a day will come that you aren’t anymore. I won’t say it will be soon. I had a solid two years where I seriously struggled, and several before that that I was just generally unhappy. But do you know what? That all changed one month ago. I wasn’t expecting it, I was simply living my life the best way I knew how, and things finally fell into place for me.

I truly cannot express how grateful I am for this change. So when Oscar, a NY health insurance company, emailed me asking if I was interested in writing a post about what I’m grateful for coming up to American Thanksgiving, there was no way I was saying no!

Just BTW, there is absolutely zero compensation of any sort going on as a result of this post. I am truly just excited to write an entire post about how thankful I am for the turnaround my life has experienced. I also have a large amount of American friends that are international students and therefore am celebrating their Thanksgiving by proxy. 🙂

I didn’t get to this place on my own. If that were possible, I would have gotten here a long time ago. I’ve mentioned some of these in passing, but I want to highlight the things that let me get here so that maybe someone else can experience a similar change that I did.

1. Caring professors. Some may think it’s strange that this is #1, but coming from a high school where I felt like I was never good enough, this has been life-changing. Having teachers to look up to that treat me like an adult has totally transformed my perspective on school. I’m motivated to work hard on my projects because I feel like they matter, and I’m not hard on myself when I don’t do as well as I had hoped for. Because I respect them and their judgement, I actually take the time to look over my assignments and find out where I could improve. It’s a sharp contrast from when I called myself stupid for getting below a 90 and has been a serious factor in increasing my own confidence.

Yeah… some days I actually don’t mind spending hours working on this. #MotivatedToSucceed

2. Real friends. You know, not the ones that you only hang out with because you don’t want to be alone, and who rag on you anytime you’re not there? I don’t mind admitting it’s been a while since I had the good ones and I cannot express how thankful I am for them. It’s very similar to #1 – having friends that truly care about me has made me feel so much better about myself.

3. My strength. Yup, I’m going for the shameless self-plug here. But there is a reason I have no shame – it takes a lot of guts to move away from anything you’ve ever know to a city where you know exactly zero people. But I did it, unlike 99% of my peers, and I have become an incredibly strong and adaptable person as a result. So yes – I am incredibly thankful that I have this strength that I will now be able to carry into every other aspect of my life.

Of course I could keep going. I’m thankful for my mom, my health, having a safe place to live, no shortage of food, privileges like a laptop and cell phone, but to be 100% honest, I’ve had those things for a long time. And while I’ve always been grateful for them, and will continue to be, they haven’t been contributors to getting me out of that dark and scary place I lived in for far too long.

The morale of this post: please prepare yourselves for #CheeseToTheExtreme:

1. You are not alone.

2. The world is full of wonderful things just waiting for you to discover them.

3. Never ever EVER EVER give up hope…ever.

I’m just an eighteen year old girl figuring out her own life as best as she can, but you can always email me at lifesarunner@hotmail.com if you want to talk / rant / obsess over Michael Buble. ❤

A big thanks goes out to Andrea at Oscar for inviting me to write this post! Check out the #WeAreThankful hashtag to see some other amazing posts coming up to Thanksgiving.

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2 thoughts on “I’m Grateful for Who I Am Now.”

What an excellent post, Emma! It is not conceited to be happy with yourself; it’s awesome 🙂 I am so excited that you are happy and comfortable with yourself and the effort you are putting in to school and life in general.

It is so heartwarming to hear that you are living life to the fullest and have let the cloud of negativity go. I can feel the positivity eminating from your words and that is fantastic! Wishing you all the best in your journey through university and onto your career goals!